How an educator built 50+ learning tools with Bolt

Before Jonathan Davis found Bolt, he was spending six hours a night in PowerPoint.

Rather than slide decks, he was building games, interactive stories, reading tools with synced audio, custom driver’s ed quizzes, Wordle variations that turned into group bingo, etc. Dozens of learning tools, each tailored to a specific student or goal. 

It was just part of life as a one-person education studio. 

“I’d spend 6 to 7 hours building a single lesson,” said Jonathan. “It worked, but it wasn’t sustainable.”

As a tutor for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), Jonathan needs to teach complex subjects like money management, driver’s ed, reading comprehension, and social skills through the 2D vector of a Zoom screen. 

The format is limiting and the task formidable. Every student is different. Each has their own learning goals, preferences, and challenges. To make it stick, Jonathan builds custom materials for each one. 

“My students loved them,” he said. “But I was pulling all-nighters to get lessons ready.” 

Then he saw an ad for Bolt on Facebook.

“I didn’t expect much, but I tried it,” he said. “And then I just kept building.”

From PowerPoint slides to intuitive apps

With Bolt, Jonathan started turning his PowerPoint files into fully functional software. Instead of spending late nights creating lesson slides, he builds real interactive tools in a fraction of the time. 

So far, he’s built:

• A driver’s ed app based on the NJ DMV manual, which helped five students pass their permit test.

• A social skills simulator, where students can roleplay real-world conversations (ex: asking for the Wi-Fi password at a coffee shop).

• A game night portal for adults with IDD who rarely get social interaction elsewhere.

  
  

He’s now built over 50 apps. All customized, all tailored to student goals. 

“It’s not just about saving time,” he said. “It’s about being able to build the exact thing one student needs without waiting on someone else to do it.”

Of course, Jonathan has also perused existing learning apps to see if any can meet his students’ needs. For example, he checked out a number of math apps when several of his students were trying to learn about money, estimations, and ratios. But none of them were designed to support the people he tutors. 

“That's the flexibility that Bolt has that all these pre-made apps don’t, even though these are very premium apps,” he said. “They can't make the adjustments that someone in my situation working with adults with intellectual developmental disabilities needs — there’s no customization. Bolt lets you do that.”

Making the most out of each session 

Most of Jonathan’s students don’t have a lot of other options. After age 21, they age out of school. From there, their support system tends to narrow pretty quickly. Some students go to underfunded day programs where, according to Jonathan, they rarely receive the one-on-one attention and social stimulation they need to thrive. 

Others stay home with no job, no classes, and very limited social interaction.

“I have a number of clients who are literally just on their phones or watching TV all day,” he said. “Then they might have an hour with me once a week. And that’s it.”

Some don’t even go to day programs. They’re just home. For those students, the weekly Zoom session with Jonathan might be the only hour where they get facetime with an educator trained to meet their needs. 

So the stakes are high, and Jonathan needs to make the most out of each session. That means each learning app he builds has to be custom, flexible, easy to use, and purpose-built for each individual student. 

One might be working on reading comprehension through Wheel of Fortune while another preps for their driver’s permit. A third might need a way to hone their social skills.

“They’re all so different,” said Jonathan. “Even if two students are working on the same skill, I have to approach it differently. One might be verbal, one might not. One needs audio cues. Another can read just fine. One learns best with games, the other with quiet repetition.”

Bolt makes it easy to build tailored experiences for every kind of learner. 

“With Bolt, I can say, ‘This student loves games and needs to work on reading,” said Jonathan. “‘Build me something that looks like Wheel of Fortune.’ And it does it. I can change it based on what works for that one person. And I don’t need to know how to code.”

“At the end of the day, I’m just trying to build something that matters to them,” he added. “Something they’ll care about and come back for.”

Personalization over scale

Jonathan’s not interested in creating a passive revenue stream. He just needs a way to make learning accessible and fun. Bolt helps him do it at a level he couldn’t before.  

“I’m not trying to build a business,” he said. “I’m just trying to show up for my students. Bolt gives me the tools to do that without burning out.”

Some of the apps Jonathan has built are remarkably simple, but others are quite complex, with APIs, custom databases, and dynamic learning paths. Each app is built with one of the following goals in mind: to make life a little more joyful, easy to navigate, or socially fulfilling for the people who use them.

“These aren’t side projects for me,” he said. “I use them every day with real people. I’ve built apps to simulate bank trips, grocery store visits, checking out at the library. These are things most people don’t even think about, but they’re huge for my students.”

Want to build your own apps, games, tools, and more? Try Bolt.